The Gardener of Mechanical Objects, 2011

In the painting The Gardener of Mechanical Objects,  we see a gardener whose right hand is made of clay. Colored, knotted ribbons spill out of it instead of water, connecting him to the ground; with the others, he sows round, metal balls into the landscape in front of my studio. To me, the gardener makes reference to both Jodorowsky and Freisler[1] – even though it was Agnieszka and me that sowed these metal balls in our performance . I was again sewing metal balls at exact the same spot in my video Nest, 2012.

The whole city belongs to this gardener’s garden, this gardener of mechanical objects watering them from the teapot hand, from the “hand that gives.”

[1] The model was in fact Hartmut Solmsdorf, Juliane Solmsdorf’s father. He is a landscape architect.

Exhibitions:
The World of Gimel, Kunsthaus Graz 2011
The Guardian of All Things that are the Case, neugerriemschneider 2011

Catalogue:
Adam Budak, Peter Pakesch (Ed.), Antje Majewski, The World of Gimel. How to make objects talk. Kunsthaus Graz / Sternberg Press, 2011